patrick.net

Those were great reads. They left me with 2 burning questions for you:

W-H-E-N A-R-E Y-O-U M-O-V-I-N-G?

W-H-E-R-E T-O?

ch_tah says

They left me with 2 burning questions for you

You cant burn a candle at both ends...

... high home prices AND jobs..

You can have one but not both .. so pick one!

SF ace says

median by itself is an incomplete story. You have to know what the deviation is.
Retail jobs at McDonalds, Walmart, etc. pays about the same whether you are in Mountain View or Columbia, MO. These may 30% of the jobs. The real difference between location is what you find in the top 25% of the jobs, which is where areas like Mountain View and San Francisco shines and Columbia are absolute duds.
A median household income metric alone would rarely reflect this, so you have to understand the deviation along with the median. Based on the eye-ball test of the city data. the 75% percentile is around the 150K-200K income level while the 90% percentile is well within the 200K to max. In Columbia, MO the top 75% percentile is around 75K and the top 10% tile is 100K-125K. The deviation adds more to the story. That 50K delta at the median household income became 100K difference at the 75% tile and perhaps 150K delta at the 90% tile.
26% of mountain view residents have household income over 150K, 14% has household income over 200K. That is 8000 households. Housing units in Mountain View with a mortgage is 7,026, less than households over 150K.

19.8% of the families have income over 200K

http://www.city-data.com/income/income-Mountain-View-California.html
25% of Columbia resdients have household income over 75K, 7% has income over 125K. about 3K households. 9,778 households have a mortgage.
http://www.city-data.com/income/income-Columbia-Missouri.html
Household income is one of many living expense. A house in mountain view that cost 5X more does not mean living expense is 5x more overall. Insurance, gas, food is pretty much the same. So once you aggregate all the cost, Mountain view my be just 2X-3X more expense, not 5X. Salary and household cost should not have a linear answer.
The MID is the most lucrative in the country (28%-35% benefit) whereas the MID in Missouri is pretty much worthless (0-10% benefit).
Income is one factor to affordability, the other is household wealth which is not even mentioned. I bet that the 75% tile household wealth in Mountain View is a least 5x that of Columbia
Just these obbservations reconcile most of the differences why household income/price should not even be close to the same.

you are comparing apples to oranges. How about comparing Mountain View CA to Lexington MA? Much higher concentration of high income families yet home prices are 200k less (and much much bigger land, less apartment dwellers, and considerably better educational system.

It seems that a lot of people end up coming to the Bay Area and staying for ten years or so. There could be cultural reasons for that--this area is welcoming and interesting for people in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties--but affordability has to factor in, too. If young people who make more money than their parents ever have can't afford a house as good as the one in which they were raised, they might look for other options. Educational systems also matter as people become parents. Kids in California get a much cheaper public education than kids in other parts of the country, and it shows. Most of the tech workers I know are not locals--they received a strong education somewhere else and came here to do interesting work. Increasingly there are opportunities to do interesting tech work in other places, albeit with worse weather. But if you didn't grow up in the California sunshine, maybe you don't have to have it. Particularly if the trade-off includes financial security and good schools.

That said, I've heard about this pattern for years. Is is a sustainable pattern? Are new eager engineers still pouring into California to keep the cycle going? If so, then it does not matter if a lot of 35-year-olds are leaving.

Serpentor says

Lexington MA?

There's nothing sexy about Lexington, that's why. They don't have their own "Real" Housewives series, no trashy celebs getting busted on TMZ, no glamor professions for young entitled types or trophy properties on Park Ave for the Foreign Money Millionaires.

Eliza says

That said, I’ve heard about this pattern for years. Is is a sustainable pattern? Are new eager engineers still pouring into California to keep the cycle going? If so, then it does not matter if a lot of 35-year-olds are leaving.

The reality is hiring for California companies takes place in many states. Intel will court several grads in say Ohio or Florida and hire to work in the NorthWest or other locations. So its not do you want to work in California.. its do you want to work for Intel, HP, Oracle ? But that can be anywhere in any state and often is. And many people are all to eager to work for a BlueChip regardless where it is. If your cool and hip, need not apply. They are not interested!